A holiday event is the perfect opportunity for you to connect with your customers. It will let you engage with them on a personal level, encouraging them to build a regular purchasing relationship with you. So, you should hold one whenever you get the chance and try to ensure as many customers as possible attend.
The first thing you need to do is make your event worth attending. Get the logistics, date, and timing all confirmed, and create a budget for your event. Then, you can add on elements which will attract people to your holiday event. Here are a few ideas you can start with.
Send Attention-Grabbing Invites
Your invites should be exciting, and hype your holiday event up. Use the invitation email templates on PosterMyWall to pick out a fun design, and then customize it according to your needs. Then, send them out to your email lists, complete with registration links and contact details.
Make sure your invitations state the date, time, venue, and type of event clearly. Also entice customers with the chance to win prizes and avail special deals if they come to your event. Work on the subject lines of your email invites, so that people actually are intrigued, and want to see what you’re doing.
Have a Fun Theme
You need to have a fun theme to inject some personality into the event. This will also help you and your customers plan around the day better. Your decor, games, and other event aspects will be easy to plan once you have a theme in place. This can be a common holiday theme like red and green colors, or something niche related to your industry. However, it still needs to be fun and easy to work with.
Have your invites and event marketing reflect this theme. This will help you streamline these aspects of your event as well, and help you pick out the right food and entertainment options too.
Set Up Games
A holiday event shouldn’t just have your customers standing around with a cup of cider in their hands. You need to set up a few fun games around the venue. This will not only encourage your customers to interact with you, but also put them in a casual and friendly mood.
In addition, you can include prizes in these games, to entice your customers. These can be your own products or gift baskets. Preferably, go for your own products, so that people get to try them out, and purchase them in the future.
Offer Special Deals
As a business, your customers will expect some sort of holiday deal from you. Deal with this by having exclusive event-only discounts. This will ensure people come to your event to avail these deals. Market them widely when you are talking about your holiday event, and make sure you mention them on social media as well.
When people see you’re offering some great deals at your event, they’ll be more likely to show up and participate.
Include Refreshments
Make your holiday event more welcoming with some food and beverages. This does not mean you need to get some high-end catering service circulating hors d’oeuvres around. You can set up a drink station and get a local food vendor to put up a grazing table with some finger-friendly food.
This will ensure people go around and have fun, but also don’t worry about making a mess. Try to get local specialties catered at this event, so that people get into the communal spirit of the holidays.
Involve Other Local Businesses
Your customers will love it if they get to find out about more businesses through you. In addition, they will see you in a positive light if you highlight other businesses. So, involve other local businesses in your holiday event in some capacity. This can cover having them set up stalls at your event, or working on some sort of collaborative holiday gift basket.
This will also fit right in with the holiday spirit, and let you benefit from those businesses’ marketing as well. This sort of collaborative energy plays off quite well, especially if you are a small business working with other small businesses.
Use Social Media
Market your event all across social media, and focus on the platforms your audiences frequent. Put up teaser posts, behind-the-scenes videos, and event invites. Also set up an event page to make any announcement about your holiday event.
Make sure your social media pages are active and that you engage with comments and messages. This will help you increase the footfall at your holiday event.
To sum up, it isn’t hard to capture your customers’ interest in your holiday event. You just need to keep things fun and exciting.